There Are No Words . . .

Words cannot express my feelings of utter frustration with having to take pictures all over the Illinois countryside to fill-in holes in the museum exhibit THREE weeks before it opens. When I drove through Gays, Illinois today with Dan after our wild goose chase looking for THE covered bridge over the Kaskaskia River, and Dan made me stop to take a picture in front of a "historic 1872 two-story outhouse," I wondered if I was in a bad and very strange dream--but no, there I really was out in the freezing cold in front of a two-story outhouse in a town named Gays in the middle of nowhere. I smiled for the picture, but the next picture of me in front of said bridge over the Kaskaskia River illustrates more accurately how I was feeling this morning.

The latest photograph assignments Dan and I had for filling-in gaps in the exhibit were: a dilapidated building in Paradise, Illinois; the covered bridge over the Kaskaskia River; road construction; and a rest stop. Problems: 1) Paradise, Illinois is not a real town--thus, there are no dilapidated or non-dilapidated buildings there; 2) All of the rivers in Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, and Illinois are flooded--thus finding and photographing a little bridge over one is very difficult (not to mention dangerous); 3) It is too cold for road construction; and 4) The closest rest stops to Charleston are 60 miles in the opposite direction from where we needed to go to take the picture of the bridge.

This morning was one big disaster. First, we went off on all of these little two-foot-wide roads looking for Paradise, Illinois, which is not a real town. It took us about an hour to determine where the theoretic town of Paradise was meant to be and find a dilapidated house to photograph. Then, we went in search of the bridge over the Kaskaskia River that is shown in one of the paintings in our exhibit. We found the bridge, but I noticed that there was water all along the two-foot-wide road we were going to need to take across to the town of Cowden. While Dan was happily photographing the bridge, I was hoping that it didn't start raining--because surely if it had, we would have gotten washed away.

Then the biggest disaster of the day happened. We drove through the flood plain to the town of Cowden, which was the only remotely civilized area for at least 20 miles. I had no idea where I was going, so people driving behind me were getting impatient. I pulled off to the side of the tiny road so that this big car could pass me, then Dan said we needed to turn around, so I was going to back into this driveway and go the other direction. Of course the people in the driveway were also trying to get out at that exact moment, so I was trying to maneuver quickly, when I heard a horrific noise: "EEEEK, WHAMP, CRASH!" I had backed Stryder into something. Dan said, "Wow, that didn't sound good." I said, "Yeah, you think?" (Dan was really starting to annoy at this point.) I was sure that I was going to get out and find the back bumper of the car in a ditch. I discovered that what I had hit was a three-foot-tall post that the people had at the end of their driveway with a reflector on it (that was too short to see from my car), but THANKFULLY the damage to Stryder was very minimal. He just has a little scratch on the side guard of the back door and a very small, slight indentation at the bottom of the side of the car right in front of the back tire. I was so grateful that it wasn't worse than that, but at this point I was also furious. There I was driving out in the middle of nowhere in search of some stupid photos, with all of the liability for everything on my shoulders. If I had totally wrecked Stryder trying to get photos for the exhibit, that would just have to be my bad luck. I had about had it with all of this photography nonsense!

We then had to go crashing over the curb to get Stryder back on the road, and then Dan started talking about how I'm a reckless driver and we needed to go back the way we came to find some road construction or a rest stop along I-57. By now I felt like booting Dan out of the car. I said, "No! We are not going back through the floodplain. We are going to take the good roads directly to Shelbyville, then to Mattoon, and back to Charleston. Besides, we've already driven along that stretch of 1-57, and we already know that there is NO road construction or rest stop!!! And I am not a reckless driver!"

I needed some food, so we stopped at the only restaurant in Cowden. Usually I would have been amused by the cow decorations in the funny, little place, but I had already decided that I hate Cowden, so I did not enjoy my diner experience today. Dan then started talking about all of these other photos we could take on the way home in case they were needed in the exhibit, but I said, "No! We are done taking photos and are going home right now." I called Catherine and told her to forget the construction and rest stop photos--we can find some public domain images online if we really need them.

So we went up to Shelbyville, then as we were driving towards Mattoon, we went through a bunch of tiny little towns. When we drove through Gays, there was a sign that said "Historic 1872 Two-Story Outhouse." I thought to myself, "You have got to be kidding me. That is disgusting." I didn't want to stop because I mad, but Dan insisted that if we didn't take a picture of it, no one would believe that we had really seen a sign for it. I was hoping that the second story of the outhouse was not directly above the first because I didn't want to think about what would happen to the person on the first story if there was someone upstairs, but sure enough--one was directly above the other. Dan thought it was great. I thought it was gross. There are truly no words to describe some of these Illinois towns. Dan wanted to work on putting together an "exhibit preview" for the website this afternoon, but I told him I was going to my apartment--which I did.

Thankfully Greg is out here with me. If he wasn't here, I think that I might have thrown in the towel this afternoon and said "good riddance" to my classmates, who I am convinced are literally insane, but Greg came down to Charleston this evening and made me feel better. We went to dinner at what I have decided is the funniest place on earth: the Lincoln Springs Resort. That is the place out in the middle of nowhere just east of town where the world's tallest Abraham Lincoln statue is. They just opened up a new restaurant there, the Stovepipe Grill, so Greg and I tried it out. The menu was hilarious. Everything had "Lincoln" incorporated into it. My personal favorite was: "Try our finger-lincoln-good BBQ sauces." (Instead of "finger-lickin'-good.") Ha ha. So there in the shadow of the world's tallest Abe Lincoln statue, we ate our dinner, which was surprisingly delicious. Greg had a "tropical turkey" sandwich with mango salsa. I had some beef brisket, cornbread, mac and cheese, and coleslaw. If any of you want a truly unique central Illinois experience, come visit me and I'll take you to the Stovepipe Grill :-) Then Greg and I went and got fixin's for tomorrow's Easter feast and we had a fun evening watching some of the very exciting basketball games. So today started out really bad but ended as a good day. I'm glad that tomorrow is Easter!

Here I Will Live

All over Springfield, the words: "Here I have lived . . ." are plastered. This was the famous phrase that Lincoln used to preface a long list of life events as he was leaving Springfield for Washington, D.C. I realized today that, in my case, the phrase goes: "Here I will live." :-) (Well, at least close by in Athens.) Today I got to go up to Springfield to meet with Linda Suits, the director of historic sites for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, and I got to see Greg too! As you can see, I even ran into Abe himself today.

Linda Suits is a really, really cool lady. She has helped us out with some of our Collections Care classes this semester, and she totally knows everything about and everyone involved in the world of museums and historic sites. We worked it out so that after I do four months of my six month internship at Camp Floyd in Utah, I can do my last two months with her there in Springfield. Today she took me over to the Old State Capitol building to see the collections I will be working with in the fall. I will get to go through artifacts from all of the historic sites throughout the state! And, she will even let me have my own office in the room next to hers in the IHPA's cool office building on 6th Street in downtown Springfield. I think this will be a really great opportunity!

While I was downtown, I also stopped for a minute at my favorite bookstore in the entire world: Prairie Archives. They have an entire section of old Lincoln books, Civil War books, and any other books you could ever imagine. It's like stepping into heaven. But, I was very good and did not buy one book. I need to save money and read the books I already have! But it's still fun to look.

Then I drove up to Athens and met Greg who had just finished up a funeral service. We then went to a cool Route 66 place in Springfield that Mom and I discovered in 2006 after I ran away from Western Illinois University: Cozy Dog Drive-In, where the corn dog was supposedly invented! They have really good corn dogs and french fries there. And, they let you put your own flavored syrup into soft drinks. Then, Greg and I went to Abraham Lincoln's house! Greg had not been there before, so now he can finally say that he has truly experienced Springfield :-) This was my fifth time going on a tour of the house, and I can't get enough of it! We then ate some delicious black cherry Jello back at his house, and I headed back to Charleston before it got dark. It was such a fun day!

Tomorrow I have to go on a wild goose chase through the Illinois countryside to find a random covered bridge to take a picture of, among other things. I'm quite sad about the NCAA basketball tourney so far. Poor BYU lost by two points last night, and tonight Clemson lost :-( I am sad about that.

SPRING!!!

FINALLY, it feels like spring in Illinois. It's good timing since today is the first day of spring. I guess that the whole Midwest around us is flooded--yikes! We got a lot of rain here over the last few days, and we were under a flood watch, but the biggest river close by is the Embarras, and it's not very big. So we haven't really had any flood problems. Everyone has been in a better mood today because of the nice weather. This morning we all had to get our pictures taken for the upcoming EIU graduate school newsletter because we were awarded a research and creative activities grant for our Tilford Dudley project. I got to have a very GQ-looking photo taken of myself at the library sitting on a chair in front of a big bookshelf. :-) Then Dan and I met with Kit, the director of the Tarble Arts Center, so she could look at the photos we've taken for the exhibit. She thought they were okay, but she's not very impressed. And she doesn't think that our class has incorporated the "built environment" into the exhibit narrative as much as we should have. That is not Dan's and my fault--and it's TOO LATE to change everything now! I'm afraid that Dan and I are going to have to drive all over the Illinois countryside at the last minute taking pictures of weird buildings. We do need to go looking for a random covered bridge over the Kaskaskia River on Saturday. And Alisha is making us all CRAZY!!! She is totally obsessed with being the BEST at everything, the FIRST to do anything, the LAST to say anything, and the LOUDEST at everything. No one can give any answers in class or anything without Alisha raising her hand and saying the same thing--because she must be remembered as the one who gave the right answer.

But, it's okay because it's spring. For the rest of the morning today I worked on the exhibit website which is almost done. It should look pretty cool. Then I went and spent the afternoon working for Dr. Hardeman. He was really sleepy today. He is supposed to write a review about a book about Dred Scott, so I was reading it to him today, and he wouldn't stay awake for more than two sentences. Then he'd be snoring. The only time he would wake up would be when I would stop reading, but if I just stopped in the middle of a sentence he would wake up, tell me to keep reading, and then fall asleep again, so I found that I had to make it to the end of a chapter and say, "That's the end of Chapter 7" before he would wake up enough to give me further instructions (where were usually, "Let's try the next chapter."). So, we flew through the book because I would start a chapter and just read the first couple of sentences of every few paragraphs. I figured that Dr. Hardeman wasn't getting anything out of it while he was asleep, and I was a little bored by all of the legal jargon, and Dr. Hardeman wouldn't actually focus writing his review until we had "finished" the book, so we made it through most of the book today :-) I kept telling Dr. Hardeman that he should get up and walk around, but he would never realize that he was sleeping until he woke up, so there wasn't much I could do about it. At one point he woke up talking about crabs biting someone in the water. I don't know what that was about.

I am currently watching the BYU vs. Texas A&M game on the internet (because they only show the Midwest games on TV here), and the Cougars are having kind of a rough time. I hope they can get their A-game on. I have been enjoying telling everyone that Lee Cummard on BYU was described by ESPN as "the best player you've never heard of." :-) Well, I've got to go write some papers--I'll try to keep my eye on the game too. Go Cougars!!!

ONE MONTH

Today is not Wednesday, nor is it St. Joseph's Day, nor is it March 19--it is simply the day that falls exactly ONE MONTH before our museum exhibit opens!! I don't feel quite as worried about it as I did yesterday, but it is still a scary thought. Everyone seems to be stepping it up a bit, so we'll see if we can get it all done. Today was a busy day, but I seem to be feeling quite a bit better, so that has helped a lot. We had another session of architecture class this morning because we missed class a few weeks ago due to freezing rain and hadn't had a chance to make it up yet. It was a very interesting class--Dr. Small totally rocks. Then I worked at school for a long time. I'm doing a project for Dr. Small where I'm going through some old magazines and newspapers that her dad had saved. I am quite flattered that she trusts my judgment enough to have me go through all of it and make recommendations for the best archival storage methods. There are some really neat things in there. My favorite is the Volume 1 Number 1 issue of Sports Illustrated from 1954. It's even in its original envelope, and it has three pages of Topps baseball cards in it, featuring players like Willie Mays and Jackie Robinson!! I've been trying to figure out how much it's worth, and I'm getting numbers between $300 and $900, but I have also found that just some of the baseball cards by themselves are worth quite a pretty penny. So that was a fun project to work on today.

Then this evening Dan and I had to go take pictures at the Mattoon train depot when the 6:55 train came through because it turns out that we will be having a historic photo in our exhibit showing a man standing at the train depot in the 1930s, and everyone decided we should have a present-day picture to match it. The problem was, the 1930s photo was taken at night when it was dark, and it should have been dark today by 6:55 since it was very cloudy and rainy all day, but of course the clouds cleared out just in time for the train to come, so it was kind of bright outside (I think that's the first time I've ever wanted it to be dark and cloudy early in the evening!). BUT, thanks to the wonders of Photoshop, we now have a perfectly-matching photograph :-) I took a picture of Dan standing there looking at the train, and then in Photoshop I made it look like it was dark outside and I added some lamp lights to account for the highlights that I couldn't make darker. It looks sooooo cool! When Catherine and Laurie saw the before and after photos tonight, they said that they are never trusting another photograph to be real ever again :-)

I worked on website stuff for the rest of the evening (we need to finish it by this weekend), and then I had to take Aly to Wal Mart to pick up some cheesecake pans because she wants to make cheesecake for Easter with the rest of the Irish liquor from her birthday party (scary!). From the looks of what that Irish liquor did to those who drank it at the party, I'm pretty sure that even though it would be cooked in the cheesecake, it could still make you drunk. So I'll probably pass on that. Well, I'm off to bed because tomorrow is going to be another jam-packed day!

March Madness

Oi vey! March Madness has begun--and I'm not talking about the fun basketball version of it (which, by the way, I'm very excited for on Thursday). I'm sorry that I didn't write on my blog yesterday, but it was a very long day, and I went to bed very sick last night. It was a good day, though, because it was St. Patty's Day :-) And, check out the crazy clouds that were in the sky yesterday!! Do those not look like Van Gogh clouds??? As I was headed back to the apartment for a minute before class last night, I looked up, and it was like Van Gogh's painting "A Wheatfield, with Cypresses" was stuck in the sky! That was pretty cool. And, I loved seeing everyone's St. Patrick's Day blogs and e-cards. :-)

When I woke up yesterday morning, I was uncharacteristically thirsty and my head hurt. I promptly drank a large glass of chocolate milk, then a large glass of o.j., then ate breakfast and took some Ibuprofen. I thought this would cure me, but it seemed to get worse during the day. I had class in the morning, then I worked with Dr. Hardeman all afternoon. I had a few minutes to lay down before heading to class last night, but that seemed to only make my head feel worse. So, I went off to Dr. Barnhart's class not feeling well--and class made my head hurt much worse! Dr. Barnhart rambled and rambled, and then he started talking about how the United States is an imperialist country (of course everyone except for me agreed with that statement, but I didn't say anything because I was in no mood or condition to fight, so I just rolled my eyes).

FINALLY, after he stopped talking Aly and I were able to start working on the assignment for Mr. Riccio's class that was due today. When we left for spring break, it was a one-part assignment, but then this past Saturday night, Mr. Riccio sent us an e-mail and added five other parts to the assignment. The original assignment was to design an object mount for one of the museum exhibit artifacts. But then we had to write a narrative about how people would perceive the object mount (hello, they're not supposed to notice the object mounts!!!), and then we had to draw scaled instructions for how someone would assemble the mount. He said, "Write instructions so that a fabricator could just look at what you give them and create the mount without asking any questions." BIG PROBLEM: Mr. Riccio has never taught us how to do anything besides bend and glue-together Plexiglas!! We don't know how to build object mounts, but we all figured it out on our own.

So, last night Aly and I stayed after class and worked on finishing the assignment. We were there until about 11:00 p.m. By this time I was so dizzy that every time I stood up I thought I would tip over. I was not hungry, but I was very thirsty, and my body temperature kept jumping back and forth from hot to cold. My neck felt really weak, and my head felt really big and heavy. My throat was also starting to feel weird, so I determined last night that I had mono, but now I don't really think I do. I wanted to take my temperature last night, so we stopped at Wal Mart and I picked up a thermometer. My temp was 101.9. I was really cold when I went to bed, so I put on my warm pj pants, a t-shirt, and a warm sweatshirt, then I heated up my heating pad, and put my two cozy blankets on top of my sheets, bed blankets, and bedspread. I think my fever must have broken during the night because when I woke up this morning I was really sweaty and I had kicked off all of the blankets and sheets, my heating pad was on the other side of the bed, and my sweatshirt was on the floor :-) I was supposed to go work on a project for Dr. Small this morning, so I had set my alarm for 8:00, but when I woke up I realized I needed to go back to bed, so I left Dr. Small a message (which must have sounded quite terrible because Dr. Small was very concerned about me when she saw me later today), and I went back to bed. I was having all of these weird dreams, and when I finally woke up again at 11:00, I thought I needed to get up and feed my pet hamster (I don't have, nor have I ever had, a pet hamster).

I felt a bit better when I got up (after having almost 11 hours of sleep), and I had to hurry in to school for class. For Mr. Riccio's class we went to the school's sculpture studio which is where (we just learned this today--it would have been nice to know sooner) we will be constructing all of our object mounts and other random things like the blasted train cars. This guy was trying to show us how to use all of these power tools, and all I can say is that Alisha with a large power saw is not a pretty (or safe) sight!!! On our way back to school, I said to the others: "Our exhibit opens one month from tomorrow. Are we really going to be able to build and paint a three-section train car by then? NONE of us are carpenters." Nobody had an answer for that. I mean, we're still arguing about what to put on our labels and what colors to make the text on our interpretive panels--and in four weeks we're supposed to have an exhibit filling two galleries at the Tarble Arts Center, as well as accompanying electronic and printed instructional materials. Hmmmmmm.

After going to the sculpture studio, we met with the director of the Tarble Arts Center and she said, "You guys know that the exhibit opens a month from tomorrow, right?" Thank you! I'm not the only one who realizes this! The meeting with the TAC director was really funny because she and Mr. Riccio were arguing about everything, and it turned into a two-hour meeting. I wrote a note to Aly and Laurie that said, "This is like the Continental Congress," because you'd have thought you were watching James Adams and John Dickinson arguing the fate of our country. Mr. Riccio needs to realize that the Tarble is our client, and we should do things their way, which is what we are going to do now, but now we have to change a bunch of things because we had done them Mr. Riccio's way. I could write about this all night, but I won't because I imagine it's getting boring.

Anyway, after all of that, it was time for our weekly meeting. I knew that our meeting would be more of the same madness, which I knew my body was not up for tonight, so instead of being at the meeting and out in the cold rain, I am snuggled in my bed working on stuff. Thankfully no one objected to my skipping out on the meeting--because everyone realizes that it would be better for me to nip this thing in the bud than to be down for the count later on. We decided that maybe I just have a strange form of the flu that doesn't involve stomach problems--because all of my symptoms seem flu-like. I am feeling a lot better tonight than I was last night, but the glands in my neck are a bit swollen. Hopefully if I go to bed early tonight I'll wake up as good as new tomorrow--because tomorrow, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are already jam-packed. Is it only Tuesday? :-) As much as I dislike Dr. Barnhart's and Mr. Riccio's classes, I absolutely love Dr. Small's and Dr. Reid's classes (and I loved Mrs. Miller's class last semester). So, it's all good and I am learning many, many, many things. Aly left for the meeting tonight at 7:15, and it's now 9:15 and she's still not home, so I am SUPER glad I decided to take it easy tonight!

Birds of a Feather Nest Together

Early, early this morning, it sounded like someone was knocking on my window. This concerned me a great deal. I was just about to be afraid, when I heard: "Chirp, chirp, chirp! Chirp! Chirp, chirp. Squawk!" Hmmmm. So I rolled over and went back to sleep. But this continued on and on throughout the morning. I couldn't figure out what the birds were doing outside to make such a racket, but when Greg came to pick me up for church this morning, he figured out that two starlings are building a nest in the dryer vent right outside my window. It was funny to watch. The female bird was sitting up in the vent, squawking directions to the male bird who was out gathering building materials for the nest. Then he would fly up there with the sticks and grass he found, and she would squawk her orders to him. They are still hard at work out there this afternoon. I am watching them fly past the window every minute or so. Instead of their racket being annoying, it gives me hope that maybe spring is not too far away :-) Also, our two pigeons have taken up residence under the stairs outside the apartment door again. We've got a regular bird sanctuary going on here!

You know it is a good day at church when somebody quotes Confederate General Robert E. Lee in a sacrament meeting talk :-) One of the missionaries, a cute elder from Samoa, was talking about "duty" and quoted the revered general. I have often heard Abe Lincoln quoted at church, but usually not R. E. Lee or U. S. Grant.

I am glad that it is "March Madness" season. Although I'm afraid that this March is going to be "madness" in more ways than one! I am excited that tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day and next Sunday is Easter! Tomorrow I'm going to wear my green "Lucky" socks and my "Irish Pride" t-shirt :-)